Red Letter Days by The Wallflowers

Red Letter Days, the fourth Wallflowers album, came out on Interscope on November 5, 2002, and it put an old face back behind the desk: Tobi Miller, the guitarist who had started the band with Jakob Dylan in Los Angeles, co-produced it with Bill Appleberry. Around Dylan stood Rami Jaffee on keyboards, Greg Richling on bass and Mario Calire on drums, and the record plays as glossy alternative rock, a fair way from the roots rock the band set out with.

The lyrics circle Dylan's usual turf of heartache, doubt and looking back, with "When You're On Top" as the bright, radio-ready face of it. There's a stray curse word in "Everybody Out of the Water", yet no Parental Advisory sticker ever landed on the sleeve. Critics and buyers met it with more of a nod than a cheer, and it stalled at number 32 on the Billboard 200.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.